Grab an expresso, pull up a bean bag or a donut cushion for those post-natal ladies and lets natter about family life

05/29/2012

yes it is time to big farewell to my typepad home. Its been a journey. Tell your friends.

Please come over to my new site. I have an incredible giveaway worth £90 of running shoes at my new site. Follow the instructions over at my new site for how to enter and while you are at it let me know what you think.

My son who is 9 has been on a school residential this week. Its the first one he has been on, he is in year 4, the school do take the infant kids in year 2 (thats 6/7 yrs) away also but our kids haven't gone on those for a variety of reasons really and not because we are clingy parents which is maybe what people assume. I don't have the luxury of being clingy with 5 of them! ;)

Anyway it was two nights away at a residential centre about 40 minutes from here.

He was really really excited. Really ready to go and try a bit of independence and live for a few days in the same set of underwear!! What boy doesn't need to experience that!?

ready for the off.

getting on board the coach!

Now here is an admission I hadn't actually expected to miss him. Thats sounds terrible doesn't it...but there was a part of me that was thinking 'ooh one less child for 2 days...hooray!!"....just would ease the workload up a bit. I wasn't worried about him, i knew he would be fine, i don't fret about his safety or if he will clean his teeth..its two days after all, whats a little furry teeth amongst friends? So i thought the immediate impact on me would be 'one less...child, lunchbag, bedtime, teatime, argument, homework..blah blah blah.

Friends of mine who had kids going on this trip had commented 'oh its going to be so quiet?' when they are away...

um.....no....nope...not...nada...at all...

5 down to 4 means noise levels kinda the same. :-/

But then i was surprised by how much i missed him. Not so much 'him' (this sounds a bit weird) but his presence. He is part of the jigsaw that makes up our family picture and without him i just kept finding myself looking round for something that was missing before i realised that it was him.

that and the 1.2.3.4.5. headcount i do ALL the time..getting to 4 and having a heart stopping "OMG!" moment before realising!!

His sister commented a couple of times 'its not the same without him"..ill have to remind her of that the next time she is moaning at me that he is being mean to her or vice versa!

Walking back to the car after i picked him up this afternoon and i even got a 'i did miss you mum' off him as well...

05/23/2012

This weeks idea was picture postcard. What says english spring better than green green trees. Why are they so green? so much rain perhaps? I took this on a wet and rainy walk in the park. Sort of right up the street of english springtime.

This week at dearbeautifulboy its all about "FUN!" So raising kids is not always fun but there is for sure a huge chunk of it and so it made choosing an image a bit of a challenge. Then i had an idea about this particulat challenge and that is to look through and use images that i wouldn't normally stop on and use.

So with that in mind, i came across this. I took this of one of our little ones at the end of a day at the beach. It was incredibly in April last year when we had a heat wave and a group of us headed to a wirral beach for the day. It really was summer temperatures and we built sandcastles, had a bbq lunch, canoed, walked in the sand and searched for little sea creatures in the rockpools. A really lovely sunny, sandy, windy day.

Finished off with a cone of chips from the chippy. Pretty perfect really.

05/21/2012

so its been quite a while since i have done one of these..that April A2Z challenge sort of got in the way a bit...

anyways this week:

Dear old man,

I see you nearly every time i take my daughter to nursery pushing your bike with a large christmas type tree tied to your bike. Like nearly every day. I am wondering if in fact you are real or some figment of my sleep starved brain. Because i cannot imagine WHY anyone would be wanting to push a bike with tree attached up a hill more than once..let alone every day. What in the heck are you doing?

Maybe it has escaped your attention but the olympics is supposed to be about sporting achievement, representing you country and enjoying the culmination of years of sacrifice and discipline to achieve a goal....not fleecing the public.

05/20/2012

on little blog here at typepad. I am moving on and upwards and taking my blog over to wordpress..i know with everyone else. Well as much as i like to do my own thing and not swim with the flow. I sort of am on this one....

i suppose the main reason is so that the name of my blog and the URL actually match. Its a tad confusing saying your blog is called 'apartyofseven' and then giving a totally different website address.

So with some help from a very talented friend of mine and LOTS of fiddling around and wanting to throw the Bl***dy computer out of the window it is nearly ready to launch!

So in a few days this site will close and my new one will open. I will post the link soon, please do carry on reading and visiting. My first post i think, will be a fabulous giveaway and some news on my other photography project.

05/19/2012

I don't really think of myself as very creative..im not really the sort of mum who can just 'knock up a playhouse out of soap, fuzzy felt and string!'..dont laugh there probably are some amazing mama's out there who can *takes hat off*

But a few weeks ago a little bit of crafting salvation came my way. In the form of this fabulous little box:

A great idea to have everything you need have some seriously good crafting projects available for your kids AND you don't need to go and dig about in an art shop to find your stuff it is all there.

it comes with fabulous clear instructions and a lovely box. The instructions were clear enough for my girls to follow them without needing me. Each box has a 'theme' Can you guess what this months theme is? :)

Glitter, glue and bird feed. What more could you want?

So far the girls have made a birdfeeder and have made me promise to make the toucans with them tomorrow.

There is also pens and A4 sheets of colouring for the kids to do. Which they have been having a little go at. There is 3 other crafting challenges and some great conservation ideas and also a book. A. lot. to do :)

I really like the idea that they kids get fresh ideas every month and that you don't have to wonder if you have glue, glitter, pens or paper in when you are caught out on a rainy day or when the babies are sleeping and the older ones are bored.

Well worth a look. Just pop on over to their website if you are interested. Toucanbox

Im a worker-bee. Wife, mama to 5 kids, yes they are all mine,yes i know how it happened & we do have a TV! ;) Part time NICU nurse, I do love my job but don't always like the NHS a whole lot. I am a photographer and observer of life. Some days I feel like I know what im doing and others I wonder who left me in charge of all these kids! I believe that cake should be its own food group. Id like to be on large aeroplane flying somewhere hot or cold just not grey.